Chris Christie’s shot at the White House was sunk when a Christie aide e-mailed a Christie appointee a note about closing lanes on the George Washington Bridge.

Or so goes the received wisdom.

The governor will indeed have his troubles in the GOP primaries, ranging from New Jersey’s still-struggling economy to his over-the-top embrace of President Obama after Sandy.

On top of this, he now faces a pension crisis that has already taken a $900 million bite out of his annual budget.

The irony is that the crisis may yet be his opportunity.

For one reason: It plays to Christie’s strength, which is blunt talk about how ordinary citizens are being swindled by the public servants who are supposed to work for them.

Jersey’s pension crisis is Exhibit A, and it is a whopper. Christie himself says it’s one of the five worst in the nation.

It’s already led to financial downgrades — which in turn invited a cutting rebuke from Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland. If not addressed now, the pension crisis will, just as Christie says, “eat us alive.”

So what could he do?

Start with something no American governor has done: Speak to his citizens honestly about the size and nature of this crisis, and the pain that even the best solution requires. He might start this way:

To my fellow citizens, tonight I will talk about a problem Trenton would rather not talk about: our unsustainable state pension system.

For decades, previous governors and previous legislators have approved bigger payouts for government retirees without paying for them.

And now the bill is coming due.

Then explain why he didn’t fix it.

In 2011, with support from our Democratic Legislature, I pushed through a bill The New York Times called “a once unthinkable setback for the state’s powerful public employee unions.”

It had many key reforms, such as requiring more employee contributions and suspending automatic cost-of-living adjustments for retirees.

At the time, some who endorsed our reforms — such as my friends at the Manhattan Institute — said they didn’t go far enough. These people have been proved right.

This I fully admit.

But the people of New Jersey need those on the other side to admit this too: There is no Plan B. We don’t have the money.

So why not raise taxes?

Some of my Democratic critics claim the answer is to raise taxes on the rich. Here’s the problem: Our people are already among the highest taxed in the nation. Our economy is being crushed by these taxes.

And some of our budget gap is because tax revenues are going down. If we rely on business as usual — jacking up rates even more — all we’ll do is send more of our most productive citizens to Florida, which has no income tax.

Why pain is part of any real solution.

I wish I could tell you there’s an easy answer. But when you don’t pay your bills for decades, getting solvent hurts. We need to bring pension and health-care costs for government workers in line with what ordinary citizens make. That also means cutting spending in areas we don’t want to touch.

What are the obstacles?

Truth is, real reform will be a huge battle. Some Democrats won’t want to do anything to help because they won’t want to do something they see as boosting a Republican governor before a presidential election. Some unions will litigate every step of the way.

Unfortunately, because nothing happens immediately when you don’t fund your pensions, it’s easy to let it slide. And this is what Trenton has been doing for years.

Appeal directly to the citizens.

My predecessors in this office, Republican as well as Democrat, brought this day upon us by not paying their bills. They never brought the issue to you because they believe the public can’t be trusted to make hard decisions.

I have a different view. I believe citizens will back you if you speak to them honestly about problems and tell them what needs to be done. I’m now in my sixth year in office.

I wish we’d gone much further in 2011 than we did. But that’s no excuse for not making the hard decisions we need to make now.

When it comes to the cause of this crisis, Christie is right: He is paying for the sins of his predecessors. Then again, those are the breaks in politics.

With 2016 looming, Jersey’s pension crisis has now become entwined with presidential politics.

So the question becomes this: How much of Christie’s economic appeal to GOP primary voters will depend on blunt talk about the severity of the crisis — and the credibility of his plans to fix it?